Slashdot Mirror
Bloggers create Press Plagiarist Of The Year Award
mccalli writes "The BBC is reporting that certain bloggers, fed up of seeing their work just lifted by the mainstream press, have created The Press Plagiarist Of The Year award. Examples are given of national newspapers simply cutting and pasting entire articles from web sites and passing them off as their own."
This isn't only a problem with main stream media taking blogger's content. Main stream media outlets have been taking content off the web and calling it their own for some time.
About two years ago there was a BBC article that stated some incorrect things about angular momentum, and me being a stickler for proper use of Physics terms, contacted the author. He stated that I was wrong and he "knew" it was correct because he had got the information from the researchers. I contacted the researchers, which were NOT listed in the article nor on the page anywhere, after being given their contact info by the BBC reporter. They agreed with me that the use of the term was incorrect but gave some reasons for why they thought it would be easier for the laymen to understand. They also pointed me to their press release on the subject. Lo and behold if their press release was not taken word for word and put on the BBC and tagged with a different author. When I brought this to the attention of the BBC reporter he started ignoring me.
Main stream media has been taking the content they choose and calling it their own for some time. Unfortunatly there doesn't seem to be anyway of controlling this because the media has a vested interest maintaining the status quo.
Well that ends my rant.